The latest monitoring results show that desertification and desert land areas in China have shrunk for the first time since the founding of People's Republic of China in 1949, but there will still be a severe situation for the prevention and control, said Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration on June 14.

The State Forestry Administration made the third nationwide survey on desertification and desert land from November 2003 to April 2005. The results show that China has nearly 2.64 million square kilometers of desertification land by the end of 2004, accounting for 27.46 per cent of the country's territory, and a total of 1.74 million square kilometers of desert land, covering 18.12 per cent. Compared with 1999, 37,924 and 6,416 square kilometers of the land areas were reduced respectively. The deputy director said, "This shows that the conditions of desertification and desert land have come under the stage of the "balance between reclamation of desert and destruction" from "destruction above reclamation of desert".

The Chinese government made two surveys on desertification in 1994 and 1999 respectively. Zhu Lieke said, "In fact, the desertification and desert land have started to shrink since 2000. Take the desert land for example. The annual expansion area of 3,463 square kilometers by the end of last century has been turned to the annual reduction area of 1,283 square kilometers."

Specialists say aside from natural factors such as dry weather that cause land desertification, the main factor is the unreasonable human activities, namely over-farming, overgraze, denudation and abuse of water resources.

"The direct economic losses caused by desertification are as high as 54 billion yuan annually, and the desertification threatens the production and lives of nearly 400 million people��, said Zhu Lieke. At the same time, Zhu pointed out that despite that greater results have been achieved in the prevention and control work, the ecosystem in the sand areas is far away from stable state and there will appear reversion likely. Meanwhile there are still more than 500,000 square kilometers of desert land that can be brought under control and nearly 320,000 square kilometers of land with evident desertification tendency. It will take at least dozens of years to fulfill the desertification-control projects with more difficulties. In addition, there also exist different man-made factors causing desertification. The unfavorable climate, which has influence on accelerating desertification, cannot be underestimated.

By People's Daily Online